Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of Enhanced Surface Plasmon Resonance on Ag Hierarchical Structures

The excitation of surface plasmon resonance on periodic structures has the potential to improve the performance of optoelectronic devices due to light trapping effect. In the study, we investigate the plasmonic characteristics of self-assembled SiO2 array with Ag film and the hierarchical structures composed of Ag spheres on Ag/SiO2 array. Absorbance spectrum of close-packed Ag/SiO2 array exhibits plasmon resonance at visible region and hierarchical structure composed of randomly distributed Ag particles on Ag/SiO2 array shows significantly increased absorbance intensity, which is in agreement with simulated results using finite-difference time-domain simulations. The hierarchical structure via solution process with enhanced intensity of surface plasmon resonance makes them excellent candidates of plasmonic applications for high-efficiency and high-throughput optoelectronic devices.